May 20, 2014

Three unlikely sources are providing qualified encouragement to Republicans who are either openly or covertly committed to a campaign strategy that focuses on white turnout, as opposed to seeking votes from Hispanics and African Americans.

The first source of this qualified encouragement is an academic study — “More Diverse Yet Less Tolerant?” — that explores what happens to racial and ethnic attitudes when you present white voters with census findings that show that whites will be in the minority in the United States by 2042.

The second source is a related study by the same authors — “On the Precipice of a ‘Majority-Minority’ America” — that explores how the “salience of such racial demographic shifts affects White Americans’ political-party leanings and expressed political ideology.”

The third source is a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit think tank. The survey measured the percentage of whites who are “bothered” by the “idea of” an “America where most of the people are not white.”

These studies present a challenge to those who have declared that the Republican Party must move away from the “white strategy” – formerly known as the “Southern Strategy.” That strategy has been the de facto Republican approach to elections since the mid-1960s. It was initially very successful, but over the past decade it has only been effective in low-turnout, midterm elections.

Now, partly in response to the Obama victories of 2008 and 2012, Resurgent Republic, a Republican organization that includes a segment of the party establishment and some of the party’s Bush-era elder statesmen, denounced the “white strategy” as “the route to political irrelevance in national elections. Mitt Romney won a landslide among white voters, defeating Barack Obama by 59 to 39 percent. In the process he won every large segment of white voters, often by double-digit margins: white men, white women, white Catholics, white Protestants, white old people, white young people. Yet that was not enough to craft a national majority. Republicans have run out of persuadable white voters. For the fifth time in the past six presidential elections, Republicans lost the popular vote. Trying to win a national election by gaining a larger and larger share of a smaller and smaller portion of the electorate is a losing political proposition.”

Maureen A. Craig, a doctoral candidate, and Jennifer A. Richeson, a professor of psychology, both at Northwestern, have written two papers that ask questions that are relevant to this internal party debate. The authors do not endorse such tactics but their work suggests that there are in fact ways to intensify white suspicion of and hostility toward minorities and immigrants. These tactics offer the potential to shift voters to the right, into the Republican column.

For their first paper, Craig and Richeson conducted a series of experiments that tested how whites respond to census data projecting that minorities will become the majority in the United States by 2042.

What did they uncover? That “exposure to the changing demographics evokes the expression of greater explicit and implicit racial bias.” One group of respondents was shown evidence of the demographic trends and another was not. Those who saw the evidence “expressed more negative attitudes toward Latinos, Blacks, and Asian-Americans” than participants who were not shown the evidence. The authors concluded that “rather than ushering in a more tolerant future, the increasing diversity of the nation may instead yield intergroup hostility.”

Really? It's almost as if the problem is diversity in general, not the unique evilosity of straight white men.

Craig and Richeson’s second study, “On the Precipice of a ‘Majority-Minority’ America,” published last month, is even more directly relevant to the strategic choices facing Republicans. The authors found that whites – whether they called themselves liberals, centrists or conservatives — all moved to the right when exposed to the information about the approaching minority status of whites. This “suggests that the increasing diversity of the nation may engender a widening partisan divide,” Craig and Richeson write.

These findings led the two authors to observe that the future of the contemporary Republican Party may not be as bleak as some say. “Whites may be increasingly likely and motivated to support conservative candidates and policies in response to the changing racial demographics,” they write. “These results suggest that presumptions of the decline of the Republican Party due to the very same changing racial demographics may be premature.”

Responding to my emailed questions, Craig wrote, “Overall, making this racial shift salient could bring more moderate White Americans into the Republican Party, as well as increase turnout among White Americans who already consider themselves Republicans. “

Like I've been saying for going on a decade and a half, if you prefer the politics of New Hampshire to the politics of Mississippi or Chicago or Bell, CA, then you should prefer the demographics of New Hampshire.

72 comments:

I am ethnic Asian immigrant, but I am also an assimilationist (into the Anglo-American politco-cultural and perhaps even genetic norms). My children are half-white and half-Asian and I'd suspect they'd probably marry whites as I did. I rather fancy the idea of being that one odd "ethnic" great great grandfather of a descendant who will be mostly white-ish (rather like lots of white Americans who fancy a little bit of "Injun" in their ancestry).

So, as an assimilationist, I find the declining percentage of white American population highly alarming, to say the least.

Like Derbyshire, I think a confident white majority America can tolerate, benefit from, and absorb a small number of minorities/immigrants, including and especially Asians. But a dwindling white majority that feels endangered is liable to create a (justified) reaction that is likely to be highly negative for all parties concerned.

Although anti-white sentiments of minorities, especially NAMs, are a significant social problem, a bigger problem in my view is the disappearance of the assimilationist ethos among the whites themselves, especially among their elites. For whatever cultural or economic reasons (or some combination thereof), the white elites (whether WASP liberals who view self-loathing as the height of self-righteous morality or Jewish elites who never feel safe in a society with with a strong Christian majority) seem bent on NOT insisting that non-whites conform to Anglo-American norms and assimilate.

I fear that the situation may soon reach a stage of "riding the tiger" -- neither jumping off nor continuing to hold on may offer a safe choice.

Clearly white fertility (and Asian fertility for that matter) is not going to rise to counteract the Hispanic fertility for a variety of historical and cultural reasons. It seems to me the only viable solution, then, is to prevent illegal immigration completelyl, significantly reduce legal immigration, and institute a serious program of assimilation for existing immigrants within the US. I fear, however, that this solution is not palatable to the elites (though I suspect a sizable majority of Americans may support it). What can be done to impress upon the necessity of this reversal to the elites? I think they fail to realize that the current trend is a pathway to disaster.

Really? It's almost as if the problem is diversity in general, not the unique evilosity of straight white men.

Well, it's not diversity per se, but how people react to being in a minority (or to the prospect of being in a minority). They feel besieged and threatened. No surprises there.

I don't share your fatalistic attitude about different people/races permanently distrusting each other. Eventually people get to know each other better and start to get along.Also, I strongly doubt the estimate about whites becoming a minority in 2042. I think it relies on implausible birth rate trends. For what it's worth, my guess is whites will still be in a majority in 2100.

The quickest way to get White liberals/moderates to vote Republican is to tell them their child will now have to go to school with a lot of Blacks for desegregation. This is something the Dems have become more vocal about these past few days, the GOP should encourage them to continue.

Yup. And this is why the Conservative Establishment drools over immigration. They know that those of us who don't need that level of supervision will never vote for them. So they drag in less advanced people, watch as they run amok and declare that we all just need socially conservative policies imposed on us from above. No mention of how they helped to create that situation.

I'm surprised and disappointed that neither the election of Barack Obama in 2008, nor his reelection, could usher in a new era of harmony in American racial attitudes and relations and end our long, national nightmare at last, just like TN Coates says we now need reparations to accomplish. It's funny though, that was the modal reason my friends gave for why they voted for him.

I'm assuming that we can take the profs at their word: that they kind of 'abhor' their findings. Then we can take it they have an anti-erstwhile-majority agenda. And since no social science is disinterested (Frankfurt School 101); then we can infer that this falls into the category of 'negative push polling': Tell wavering whites they are ripe for manipulation by ooga-booga forces of rampant conservatism, and they may rethink their rethinking.

Put simply: paint the teeming masses as underdogs in the teeming mass tournament.

It's not just whites. Hispanics will eventually form their own branches of the Democrat Party that will exclude blacks, Jews and Asians from positions of control. The Mexicrats will continue to ally with the national Democrat Party as once the Dixiecrats did until the Civil Rights revolution.

We are probably headed to thoroughly racialized political parties that practice coalition politics where the coalitions vary by issue.

The fact that modern America is highly segregated will reinforce these developments.

People who want the Republicans to lose elections want Republicans to not seek white support. It's quite funny.

I guess eventually they could achieve something like ANC ruled South Africa, where opposition parties really are irrelevant. But that seems a long way off, SA is less than 10% white, the US will have a white voting majority for decades, concentrated in the older age groups who also vote more, while Mexican-Americans don't vote much and aren't big in swing states.

Mitt Romney won a landslide among white voters, defeating Barack Obama by 59 to 39 percent. In the process he won every large segment of white voters, often by double-digit margins: white men, white women, white Catholics, white Protestants, white old people, white young people. Yet that was not enough to craft a national majority. Republicans have run out of persuadable white voters.

59% is a landslide? No my friends, a landslide is more akin to the percentages democrats get with NAMs, and even Jews. If whites ever voted in similar percentages for the GOP, we'd effectively no longer have competitive elections. The GOP would win big.

I suppose this is what is troubling the NYT. So they will continue to give the GOP advice on amnesty and minority outreach to ensure this never happens. The sad thing is the GOP will probably listen.

Sure Romney won the white vote overall, and won it big. But the Presidential election isn't one election, it's 51 separate elections.

Romney did not need a single more white voter than he got in Mississippi and Alabama to win those states, and virtually nothing he could have done could have cost him as much as one white vote in those states. But his win margins among white voters in crucial swing states outside the South were weak.

Now, as for the subject matter at hand, the academics are coming up with the right answers while the official Stupid Party is coming up with the wrong answers because the academics are not on the take from the open borders lobby and the RINO donor class.

My advice to bigoted old white guys: Get over it! It's a lot of fun once you're smart enough to quit seeing differences as a threat rather than an opportunity.

When you want to preserve a 50s way of life in a 2016 world, where class and race matter, where people know "their place," it's simply won't fly. While I believe more ugliness will surface in the next few campaigns, I think (and pray) Americans of all stripes will come together. Not in my lifetime, maybe, but some day.

I'm white. I'm not nervous. Rich white men have been running this country for 225 years. Its about time they shared power with the rest of Americans

The RNC is in trouble and sliding into a demographic abiss. The US military (honor thy service syndrome) is much closer to brown than white and all those Southern Army bases are repopulating those communities with non-white folks through local marriages and resettlement. Only one county over from the military installation have cheap housing that are commuting distances to the industrial jobs. These Southern States are inching toward Blue States without any ability to stop the process because of the "honor the soldier syndrome" and the fact that non-whites are populating the US

I'm in agreement with you on most racial issues, but has it ever occurred to anyone that the plutocracy isn't good for whites (or blacks?)

Everyone here loves to talk about Mitt Romney losing because not enough people are white anymore, and that may be part of it--I am not denying that. However, why the heck would a laid-off blue collar worker in the Midwest vote for a Bain Capital guy? You're ignoring the role of a stagnant economy...

Also, I have never gotten the disdain of alt-righters for socialism. The whitest countries in Europe have it, and it works pretty well there. OK, Communism, blah blah blah, but that was the Russians (notorious for their corruption) and 25 years ago. The palest countries are the most socialist.

Republican don't need to pander that much to win. Just quit nominating grandfatherly, technologically, out-of-touch guys. Among younger voters I think being technologically and culturally savvy counts for more than anything else, including political ideology.

Now that I remember that I've read stories about these studies before, there's one other point that got by even Sailer: The real purpose isn't to encourage the Stupid Party to chase after the white vote, as Edsall seems to think. The purpose is to find a PR/propaganda route to keep white people from being mad at their own racial dispossession. The way they're going to do it, as this research showed, is to keep bombarding white people with propaganda about how they're "privileged."

And one more thing: Why are we boo-hooing over Mitt Romney? Every month that passes by after he lost to Obama, the more I see and hear from him, and the more I see and hear from his flacks and former campaign staffers, the more I'm glad he didn't win, and the more I realize why he didn't win. The latest was that non-troversy from the Wolfeboro, New Hampshire police commissioner. Romney has a vacation home in Wolfeboro, so he felt the need to put his two cents in to call for the commissioner in question to resign.

And that's not even counting the conga line of former Romney people joining the conga line of former McCain people and the conga line of former Bush 43 people all over cable TV calling for amnesty, open borders, and chasing the chimera of the "great" Hispanic vote.

"Socalism" in those whitest of white countries in Europe (or rather, they used to be white) has nationalist connotations, and does not mean that the underlying economies of those nations aren't fundamentally free market. It's just that public mechanisms skim a lot off the value added mechanisms of the free market for what it and the given society thinks are public welfare needs and benefits.

"Socialism" in the United States has the connotation of universalism and big and abusive state mechanisms.

I'm white. I'm not nervous. Rich white men have been running this country for 225 years. Its about time they shared power with the rest of Americans."

Rich white men will continue to run the country, you idiot. However, regular non-rich whites, like you, will have less and less say over their own destiny and will be forced to live in a country that will become increasingly alien and hostile to them.

Get back to us in thirty years as to how you feel about becoming a dispossed minority in your own country.

I think the economy just doesn't need as many people as it used to. We can't expect everyone to live off wages anymore--there isn't enough work that needs to be done. Half of the jobs we have are make-work positions anyway--associate diversity director at Directional State U?

That means some form of socialism is necessary. Obviously that's going to work a lot better with ice people (which technically includes Asians).

Also, while I grew up in New York, I have no particular animus (unlike many of my distant relatives--my immediate family has none other) toward the South or traditional American culture. I see no reason to wipe it out so some guy in a West Side Apartment can get one over on the people who didn't let his grandpa into the country club. I think it should be allowed to continue to exist, and don't see the reason why you need to inject Hispanics into North Carolina or Iowa. Let the rednecks have their country.

As for Asians, well, they're generally well-behaved, we all admit that. However, we're entering a period of rivalry with China, and Chinese-Americans might be tempted to divided loyalties (look at my odious extended relatives and Israel). This is a geopolitical problem and has nothing to do with the intrinsic worth of the individuals in question.

Republican don't need to pander that much to win. Just quit nominating grandfatherly, technologically, out-of-touch guys. Among younger voters I think being technologically and culturally savvy counts for more than anything else, including political ideology."

Knowing how to use a cell phone is not "technologically savvy" if it is still just a magical black box to you, which is what it is to most people.

And what does "culturally savvy" mean? That he's seen every X-men and Spiderman movie? Our culture is crap. Being in touch with it is hardly a recommendation.

I desire only one thing from a politician - that he represent the interests of ordinary white voters.

As Steve has pointed out, there can be a high cost to "noticing things" and, so long as people are satisfied with the status quo, which still enjoys the benefits of Anglo-Saxon values, a low cost to parroting the multiculturalist worldview in contemporary America.

However, when whites find out America is set to become majority minority, it forces the issue in a way that it has not been previously. Now they have to look at the complete social dysfunction among NAMs in the US (and the dysfunction in Africa and Latin America, for that matter) and ask: is this the world I want to live in?

Romney isn't an idiot. He did everything perfect in exercising this strategy. It didn't work, because it no longer works. The Republicans are so frustratingly stupid if they stick to this.

You can't keep relying in a shrinking demographic. The numbers don't lie. If the Republicans go back to the 2012 playbook, they'll get the same result, and every 4 years their chances will be worse. This strategy plays straight into what Democrats want. Where are you going to get a more appealing white establishment candidate than Mitt Romney?

I'm glad the Republican party is dying. What will be, will be. I want a citizenist party that reps the interests of the white working class and middle class.

The reason why the Republicans lost the GE was because the white working class didn't come out to vote for them. Why should they have? The Repubs stand for exporting their jobs.

" Eventually people get to know each other better and start to get along."

Not blacks. You can't assimilate 45 million blacks.

You also can't assimilate 60 million Latinos.

I do agree that the demographic trends aren't quite as bad as predicted, but they are not good.

@Jason Hops,

Where will whites vote as a "block"? We have 50 states, and at least 10-12 distinct cultural regions. Whites are diverse. Blacks vote as a bloc. (That's the proper spelling of the word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_bloc)

JohnSmith: Jesus! Those NYT comments are depressing. I think I may hate white people more than Farrakhan.

I can't help but be more amused than depressed by the NYT's earnest self-regarding white commenters. Anyone with a tithe of the intelligence, education, and cosmopolitansim they attribute to themselves could understand the implications of the information provided in that article, but it all sails right over their heads.

For the life of them they can't see that it's about anything but those stodgy old racist white guys finally clearing the scene. You'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the guy crowing about how any sort of "southern strategy" is just a southeastern relic because it's meaningless right now to white people in...Seattle.

And so why should anyone care? Social percpetion sees Republicans as the WASP party such that whites who are primed with demographic data are more likely to vote for them. In political reality, moving Republican in response to such data accomplishes nothing, because the business interests that control the party are as committed to demographic change as the elites that control the Democrats. All this squabbling, posing, and name-calling, on all is sides, is pointless, and only indicates the extent to which American electoral politics is a distraction of a charade.

I have my doubts about the validity of the survey research on which these studies rely.

It may be valid - who has enough time to check out in detail every study reported in the media. But it looks dubious.

I have become sensitized survey methods by the infamous Cook Global Warming survey. That's the one that reported that 97% of all scientists support Global Warming. This is very widely reported in the press but it's bogus. Global Warming may or may not be a valid concern but there can be no doubt that many of the climate partisans are simply lying through their teeth.

So I wonder about the methodology of these studies. How do you find white people who are unaware that the ethnic proportions of the nation are changing. Do you go to an institution for the mentally feeble?

Surveys that are conducted by groups that have a political agenda always seem to be able to publish results that support their viewpoint. So saying that a think tank is non-profit hardly assures the reader of a balanced approach.

Mechanisms like the Neyman-Pearson Lemma and the rejection of the null hypothesis or any of the other statistical research techniques only protect us from random error. They are no proof against bias.

There are just too many studies out there. I can't check them all out. It's like all the ballot propositions. I can't look into all of them either, so I just vote against all those that raise taxes. Similarly I don't automatically credit the findings of any think tank or sponsored research entity.

"I don't share your fatalistic attitude about different people/races permanently distrusting each other. Eventually people get to know each other better and start to get along."

Like where? If NYC is the best case scenario for a multiculti future, people actually do continue to distrust each other indefinitely. What they learn to trust is a massive police state which keeps a lid on everything.

Now this is what I don't understand. Steve says he would like to live in a place with the racial demographics of NH. But as an adult he has only chosen to live in LA, Houston and Chicago.

The L.A. that Steve settled down and raised a family in was a radically different place than it is today. The LA suburbs like the Inland Empire and the San Fernando Valley were white then, but now they are Mestizo.

Putting that aside, your implication that people can choose where they live is very disingenuous (as are most of your kvetching comments). People are tied down by jobs, family, and friends. Most people aren't rootless cosmopolitans just looking for the greenest pasture they can use for their temporary benefit.

To me, the consequence of real importance one may infer from these studies is the potential effect on the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party.

The increase in white distaste for diversity may increase the already existing white constituencies of the Republican Party. But it will pull out of the Democratic Party any stabilizing influence from the white communities that now support it. One would expect to see any number of white suburbanites turn against the Democratic party, because that's where a lot of the Democratic whites come from.

As the Democratic Party gets driven ever more by the identity groups now already coming into dominance, its politics is going to become only more radical and divorced from economic realities.

If the Republican Party is The Stupid Party, then the Democratic Party will become The Crazy Party.

Very few, but 1st world living standards are themselves modern (20th century) phenomena. Most countries aren't three generations removed from war, colonialism, etc. Yet people like you indict them for not reaching 1st world standards double quick, and use dodgy statistical correlations to bolster your claims.

All politicians are whores but they need to be whores now for the majority of their constituents - or lose their street corner. The article mentions Romney. He lost because not enough whites supported him - and how could they? They've had crony capitalism and Thomas Friedman-ite blather and "free trade" and open borders up to the gills for decades; and just look at this country now.

The white Republicans who stayed home in disgust on Election Day 2012 are "an alarm bell in the night."

@David:Hell, any country is clover if you have enough money, protection, and Western technology.

And what's wrong with that? Western technology is not genetically tied to Western countries (correlation with "Western culture" is higher). Any country today that picks up Western technology and adopts a scientific temperament, and educates its people (some fraction of which are bound to be high-IQ) will make progress on its own.

After all, Northern European backwaters did not come up with many civilizational innovations on their own; they copied and adopted Roman systems. Yet they were able to advance on their own after that, weren't they?

Measuring people/races based purely on their current state while ignoring historical experience is, to me, a fundamentally flawed methodology. But I have no illusions I can convince you, or anyone else on this blog, on that count. You can keep believing in your genetics-is-everything theory if it makes you happy.

At 5/21/14, 6:33 AM vedd said..."My advice to bigoted old white guys: Get over it! It's a ous. Rich white men have been running this country for 225 years. Its about time they shared power with the rest of Americans"

Ok, it's time for poor white men to finally get their chance at the helm.

"I think it relies on implausible birth rate trends. For what it's worth, my guess is whites will still be in a majority in 2100."

The under 5 population is already majority non white, seems plausible that the population will be non white soon, include the fact that most immigrants are also not white, exactly what are you basing your statement on ?

"My advice to bigoted old white guys: Get over it! It's a lot of fun once you're smart enough to quit seeing differences as a threat rather than an opportunity.

When you want to preserve a 50s way of life in a 2016 world, where class and race matter, where people know "their place," it's simply won't fly. While I believe more ugliness will surface in the next few campaigns, I think (and pray) Americans of all stripes will come together. Not in my lifetime, maybe, but some day.

I'm white. I'm not nervous. Rich white men have been running this country for 225 years. Its about time they shared power with the rest of Americans"

Typical lefist drivel, you can find the same drivel being sold by politicians in most third world sh!tholes, "lets all get together and share this wonderful country blah blah blah", you know what, they are still sh!tholes, and those places that were ruled by those nasty old white men are not.

So you see opportunity when a country is made up with tons of third worlders, care to mention a single country that have lived up the benefits to all this wonderful opportunity ?

United Arab Emirates (at least for the local Arabs and rich expats)Oil under the ground, which pays for poor Indians and rich expats to run the country, so when the oil runs out its not going to be like majority of other Arab countries because of ... ?

Chile? (not quite first world, but decent enough; mostly mestizo population)Its mostly white, by not completely, which explains why its not quite first world.

"Vedd, there is a name for people who don't care for their families, their people, their ethnicity or their race.

That name is sociopath."

In fairness when one is subjected ones entire life from government, schooling, media and hollywood that supporting anything that is white is bad, not many will do so, its not always sociopathy (although I have come across a few whites that have a sincere hatred for other whites because they are white).

"59% is a landslide? No my friends, a landslide is more akin to the percentages democrats get with NAMs, and even Jews. If whites ever voted in similar percentages for the GOP, we'd effectively no longer have competitive elections. The GOP would win big. "

Whites vote 54 or 55 or 59% GOP depending on the election? Well, what a bunch of dirty crossburners.

I don't have much of a math mind but over the long holiday weekend I may go over the 50 state vote totals... try to figure out what the vote percentages would have been if whites had voted 70% and 95% Republican in 2012.

""Vedd, there is a name for people who don't care for their families, their people, their ethnicity or their race.

That name is sociopath."

In fairness when one is subjected ones entire life from government, schooling, media and hollywood that supporting anything that is white is bad, not many will do so, its not always sociopathy (although I have come across a few whites that have a sincere hatred for other whites because they are white)."

Psychopaths believe 2+2=5.

Neurotics know that 2+2=4... but it really, really bothers them.

Hollywood encourages neuroticism. One is paid handsomely to be neurotic.

One of their comedy poster boys, Patton Oswalt, oozes with neuroticism, while selling himself as some kind of "voice of reason." That's a bad psychological mix.

I suppose he does so because it pay's his mortgage. He's paid to not think clearly, while posing professionally as one who does.

This is bound to create incongruencies, such as when his twitter fans balked at Patton accidentally admitting that Steve Sailer possessed a remarkable insight into how people process information, while punishing others who process it... better.

Oswalt really believes he possesses keen insight that stands alone from his audiences tightly-held political beliefs. Ironically, that's why he lies to them.

Let's say some other ideas make complete sense to Patton regarding race that align with some of Sailer's ant/or even Wade's observations. Think he's going to share that on Twitter? I believe unmitigated terror would keep Patton from doing so. He might even tell himself he actually believes what he knows not to be true, according to his lying eyes.

That's why I suspect at some point Patton will suffer some kind of nervous breakdown. Cognitive dissonance of the desperate kind has a way of doing that.

Patton Oswalt may very well be the Blanche Dubois of the Twitterverse.

"Romney couldn't convince whites to vote for him because he only went to the mat for his industry buddies. Every other conservative issue he tried to triangulate in the primary."

This. Romney managed to dispatch several of his primary contenders with their idiotic support for amnesty, but once he secured the nomination his opposition to illegal immigration disappeared down a rathole. It was nowhere on his website. I checked quite regularly. What was on his website vis-a-vis immigration was a love letter to a massive increase in legal immigration.

Post-candidacy, Romney came to Utah and endorsed an effort to give establishment RINOs even more control of the nominating process, so that Utah Republicans can never get rid of RINOs like Bob Bennet again. That measure also forced the party to open its primaries to Democrats. That's Mitt Romney - "conservative" and most recent Republican standard-bearer.

Quite frankly I believe that Romney would have come out in support of the current amnesty bill if it wouldn't mean a double flip-flop.

Also, I strongly doubt the estimate about whites becoming a minority in 2042. I think it relies on implausible birth rate trends. For what it's worth, my guess is whites will still be in a majority in 2100.

Also, I strongly doubt the estimate about whites becoming a minority in 2042. I think it relies on implausible birth rate trends. For what it's worth, my guess is whites will still be in a majority in 2100.

You do realize that white births are now less than 50% of all births? Even if immigration fell to zero, as long as those birth rates continue, the future minority-majority is now baked in the cake.

But the speaker isn't wearing a ring. He is unattached and sexually available, unbuttoned and unzipped. So what we have here is a scene of town fathers listening respectfully to a swarthy, sunbaked, blue-collar neighbor, an outsider from the working class and maybe a person of ethnicity (Italian? Greek?) who isn’t afraid to think for himself or to stand alone, and who represents both the promise of the town and a threat to its genteel homogeneity.

Surveys that are conducted by groups that have a political agenda always seem to be able to publish results that support their viewpoint. So saying that a think tank is non-profit hardly assures the reader of a balanced approach."

A good point. The fact that any and every viewpoint finds support in "studies", means that at least some of the "studies" are completely bogus.

Quite frankly I believe that Romney would have come out in support of the current amnesty bill if it wouldn't mean a double flip-flop."

He doesn't need to. Ex presidential candidates who will never run again are a non-factor in swaying public opinion. But his veep nominee Ryan, who is still a viable Republican party figure, is aggressively pushing amnesty.

If Romney had won in 2012, a "comprehensive immigration reform bill" - i.e., an amnesty - would have already been passed.

From Day One it was crystal-clear that a vote for Mitt Romney was not more than a vote for "free trade" agreements, amnesty, and middle-class austerity. Forget the website and the shifting campaign planks - he simply radiated RINO. It oozed from every pore in his body.

I'm with Mr. Derbyshire in thinking that Jeff Sessions might be a good candidate.

But we'll probably again get Rubio and Cain and that airhead from Texas who can't remember his own platform. Plus Jeb and the New Jersey thug and some other losers. With Sarah Palin serving as a "kingmaker" on FOX.

Interesting question: what's stopping Sheldon Adelson from running? Or any of the puppermasters? After all, why be a puppetmaster - why not instead be the man? Wouldn't that be a little more honest and healthy? For democracy, I mean.

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You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

My Book:

"Steve Sailer gives us the real Barack Obama, who turns out to be very, very different - and much more interesting - than the bland healer/uniter image stitched together out of whole cloth this past six years by Obama's packager, David Axelrod. Making heavy use of Obama's own writings, which he admires for their literary artistry, Sailer gives the deepest insights I have yet seen into Obama's lifelong obsession with 'race and inheritance,' and rounds off his brilliant character portrait with speculations on how Obama's personality might play out in the Presidency." - John Derbyshire Author, "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics" Click on the image above to buy my book, a reader's guide to the new President's autobiography.